This story will eventually get along to news of a potential original film from Robert Rodriguez but first of all, we need to tidy up a lot of loose ends regarding his ever mounting pile of in-the-works sequels. He’s a franchisomaniac.

All of this info comes from the fact that a number of online press were last week invited down to the set of Predators and they duly squeezed Rodriguez for all they could. We’ll take it one franchise at a time.

Here’s the man on future Machete movies:

We always talked about making him a franchise character. Danny and I talked about it in ‘94…maybe Desperado that’s when I first mentioned the Machete character. So imagine that…he’s been bugging me since ‘94.

Add into the mix a bit of light, hype-building and pot-stirring by Machete himself, Danny Trejo:

I’m sure we’ll see more Machete if it’s a hit and won’t if it isn’t. Of course, that’s like pretty much every other action picture, so… no news here.

How about Sin City 2, then? Is there something more solid on that front?

When asked if the film will ever happen, Rodriguez offered:

I can’t say no because I don’t know its no. I know Frank wants to do it, I know I wanna do it and its always a sort of ‘time permitting’ kind of thing but it’s not like I can tell you definitely we’re starting. It’s not my next picture, I know that. Doesn’t mean that its not the picture right after because that’s still a possibility.

Do remember that these interviews took place before yesterday’s sad news about the passing of Brittany Murphy, Sin City‘s Shellie.

After those predictable maybes, is there anything on Rodriguez’ plate that’s a little more certain? Indeed there is. It would seem he’s about to shoot the previously announced fourth Spy Kids film, gearing up for a March or April start date. What we didn’t know until now, though it was fairly reasonable to assume this was the case, is that he’s going to be starting the franchise over again with the next installment:

Well I know I owe The Weinsteins another movie and I’ve already turned in a script for Spy Kids, another Spy Kids, which is a reboot of Spy Kids. It’s different kids not the old kids and that one is really cool.

Waitaminute – he owes the Weinsteins another movie? That sounds like yet another door closed on Sin City 2, if he’s just seeing out contractual obligations to the brothers.

Rodriguez seems keen to let us know this next Spy Kids will be more like the first than the second and third:

What I like about this Spy Kids it reminds me of the first one where is not so much just the kids in fact it leans more towards the parents because you become a parent, you get a lot of ideas on where you can put some of this, you really couldn’t put some of this stuff on a R rated movie that you want to put in a film…. The Weinsteins really wanted to do another one and I had an idea for one. I even went back and pilfered off my old original first script and found some ideas that I couldn’t bring to life back then I was like ‘Wow these are good ideas.’ So they get to finally come back up.

All in all, he seems as productive as ever but what about something fresh? There’s a glimmer of something, but I’ll be darned if I can decipher what he really means:

I’d probably do [Spy Kids] in the early part of next year, March or April, and then I do have something for later in the year. I can’t say what that one is though.

It could be just another sequel. It certainly doesn’t seem to be Nervewrackers, a previously announced project which appears to have gone right back up on the shelf. Disappointingly, there’s no mention of it in any of these interviews where the questions do seem to be very sequel and franchise obsessed. Seeing as Nervewrackers is a movie Rodriguez was supposed to be making for the Weinsteins I’m guessing we’ll never see it.

I liked the first Spy Kids a great deal, the second one a touch less and the third less again so I can see exactly why Rodriguez was trying to sell the links between the next film and the original, and to put a break between it and the follow ups.

Incidentally, there’s a Blu-ray box set of the Spy Kids films available in Canada right now but I really should warn you that the picture quality is atrocious. A ‘real’ release with decent image and sound and some extras must be forthcoming at some point, surely?

Better disc news is that Rodriguez did confirm that he’s working on Blu-ray discs for the Mariachi trilogy and that they’ll be out ‘sometime next year’.